I've not seen any comments about the qc msg sent out to the fleet concerning the new customers that our new sales team is pursuing, so I've got a few comments of my own
First off, I have a lot of faith in this approach. I see a lot of positives in John's decision to pursue direct customers rather than to just start dropping our rates to compete with the hoards of low ball bidders in the spot market, load board arena. Load One's ability to get it's contractor's good rates depends not so much on the shipper paying higher rates. The trick is to get the freight directly from the shipper before the rate gets cut by somebody else. As in any business, the fewer middle men that are involved, the better the rewards.
The customers mentioned in that qc msg are not small customers by any stretch of the imagination. From the little I know about marketing, salesmen are a dime a dozen. Good, solid, industry specific professionals with the contacts and reputations required to even get a meeting with shippers of the caliber mentioned in that qc msg....well, those guys are far from a dime a dozen.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that John has made some serious investments to bring these people onto the Load One team. This is not a small endeavor. I'm guessing that if we knew the real numbers, they would be staggering to most of us. We need to support these efforts as much as possible. We, as contractors, need to be even more conscious of the appearance we present to these new customers by keeping our equipment looking good, clean and in good repair. Please don't think this is pointed at anyone in particular, I'm far from perfect myself. I just wanted to say this as a reminder to all of us.
I have one last comment in this novel...lol. As we see new customers come online through the efforts of the sales team, I personally think it is a very bad idea to disclose publicly any information that might help a competitor know who we are doing business with. In the past, even before I moved to L1, I've seen some fairly specific information given out on the forums. I've seen enough information given out that if I were a sales agent at a competing carrier it would have been a matter of a very few days before that customer would have an additional option for their expedited freight needs. If I were a member of this new sales team, I would be pretty disappointed if I worked my butt off to acquire a new account for L1 only to see the name and/or location plastered on an internet msg board...or facebook...or anywhere. I'm told that it's not as much of an issue as I see it being, but you'll have a tough time convincing me that telling your competition where your business is coming from is ever a good thing.
John has made his commitment, I believe the sales team is going to bring us new customers...and I believe, as contractors, we need to be prepared to step up to the plate and be prepared to do our part to make these efforts pay off for all concerned.
That's all folks
I was going to make a longer post...I just ran out of words
